Education

PhD

Title: MD Simulation of N16n, an aragonite stabilising peptide

Supervisor: Prof. Tiff Walsh. Prof. Mark Rodger

Details: N16n is a peptide found in the shells of the Japanese pearl oyster where it is used to form the fracture resistant Nacre layer made of aragonite slabs. Despite experimental work undertaken by other groups, such as that of John Evans at NYU, little is known about how or why this peptide stabilises the formation of aragonite. The project consists around simulating a n16n under various conditions to understand the nature of this process.

This work was also featured in Channel Ten's children's science program "Scope" episode 164 - "Biomimicry", the work features from about 4 minutes into the program, and can be watch here.

MSc Project

Title : Modelling of Frustrated Spin systems using Monte-Carlo simulation.

Supervisor: Prof. M.P. Allen

Details: The aim of this project was to explain the interesting time- and field-dependant behaviour of Ca3Co2O6. When placed in a increasing magnetic field steps are seen in the magnetisation of the crystal, the number of which is dependant on the rate at which the field was varied. During the project I wrote a number of Monte-Carlo methods to model this system using a simple Ising model on a stacked triangular lattice, the methods I coded included, Wang-Landau, Replica Exchange, Wolff Clustering and standard Metropolis Monte-Carlo.